Liberia R-PP Draft 30 May 2011 PC review Reviewers: European - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Liberia R-PP – Draft 30 May 2011 PC review Reviewers: European Commission, Nepal, Norway, Uganda

1a – National Readiness Management Arrangements • Strengths: Commitment of other sectors in planning and implementation of REDD readiness shown by the planned arrangements. • Improvements since PC8: – clarification of functions NCCSC, NCCS, RTWG – introduction of RIT and RIU. • Still missing: – Address capacity building needs  ToRs – Clarification of activity plans in table 1a  Standard met provided remaining comments are addressed.

1b – Information sharing and early dialogue with key stakeholder groups • Strengths: evidence that Liberia undertook “an exercise to identify key stakeholders for REDD- plus”; the stakeholder dialogue process so far has been considerable • Comment: Additional elaboration of Table 1b (Summary activity budget) to describe activities and relevance to what has been reported to have been achieved to date would be useful.  Standard met provided remaining comments are addressed.

1c – Consultation and participation process • Strengths: – the proposed consultations and participation plan is quite elaborated. – Liberia is the first country in the world to set up an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative specifically for timber • Comment: this section would be enhanced by including ToRs for developing: 1. Consultations and participation Strategy and Plan 2. Awareness and communication Strategy and Plan 3. Mechanism for addressing conflicts and grievances  Standard met. Liberia could consider addressing additional comments.

2a – Assessment of Land Use, Forest Policy and Governance • Strengths: extensive description of Land Use, Forest Law, Policy, and Governance. • Comments – May comments: agricultural expansion, development corridors, forest management and REDD+ seem to be proceeding separately  lacks consideration of synergies and inconsistencies between the different sectors. – The inclusion of ToRs for the assessment of land use, forest policy and governance would clarify how activities presented in Table 3b contribute to the completion of the assessment.  Standard largely met. Consider addressing additionnal comments

2b – REDD Strategy Options • Strengths: – Proposed REDD-plus strategies are well aligned with the identified drivers and a plan of how to address the identified drivers is given. – addition of 2 options: Enhancement of carbon stocks in degraded forest areas ; Carbon stocks enrichment in barren land through timber crop planting • Additional comments: 1. Include ToRs on completing REDD Strategy Options, showing how activities in Table 3b link up together. 2. Clarify link with 1c: how will consultations support the development of REDD Strategy options? 3. Show how the process of completing REDD Strategy Options link with 2d – Assessment of social and environmental impacts)  Standard met. Consider addressing additional comments.

2c – REDD Implementation framework • Comment : This section would be enhanced by including ToRs to elaborate on the process for completing the design of the implementation framework  Standard met. Liberia could consider addressing additional comments. 2c – Assessment of social and environmental impact  Standard met

3 – Reference scenario • Strengths: – A thorough and sincere assessment is given of available data and data needs as well as key challenges and options for developing a reference level for the country. – Building staff capacity is identified honestly as a major challenge for this work and for the development of a national MRV-system. • Improved: – clarification of the definition of forest and the treatment of forest carbon pools other than Above Ground Biomass  Standard is met

4a – Emissions and removals • Strengths: while little detail is given on the design of the actual MRV system, the section provides clear and good early ideas and principles for this work. • Improvements: clarification on historical period considered and on how the final MRV system will build on the test phase .  Standard is met

4b – Other Multiple Benefits , Impacts and Governance • Section significantly improved since PC8. • Latest improvement: Involvement of stakeholders in the definition of Liberia’s specific indicators for social and environmental benefits.  Standard is met

5 – Completeness of information and resource requirements • Comments: – Budget estimates do not show costs for capacity building  costs embedded in respective sections? – A more detailed budget would facilitated assessment.  Standard partially met. Liberia could consider addressing these comments. 6 – Design a Program Monitoring and Evaluation Framework  Standard is met.

Conclusion • Voluntary PC Reviewers are of the opinion that Liberia’s R -PP provides a satisfactory foundation for funding • PC reviewers request Liberia to take into account the comments made.